Over-the-counter disposable bandages have enjoyed popularity for decades. The use of such bandages is widespread in the first-aid treatment of minor skin wounds such as abrasions and accidental incisions. Moreover, certain features have been added to these bandages, during their development, to increase comfort to the user; these features include wound release materials, perforations in the adhesive tabs, and the like. The resulting products have gained substantial consumer acceptance.
Unfortunately, these disposable bandages continue to present disadvantages both to the manufacturer and the consumer. The most popular bandages include a perforated plastic sheet or strip, the sides of which are ordinarily coated with a perforate pressure sensitive adhesive composition on their inner surfaces, having a wound covering pad (typically gauze) positioned in and adhered to the center of the strip or sheet. The wound facing surface of the pad is treated or laminated so as to prevent the pad from adhering to the wound. Release material coated strips are placed over the adhesive tabs and the bandage itself is then packaged and sterilized for sale or use. This process, although it results in a commercially acceptable product, requires several manufacturing steps and a number of component materials, thus preventing the simple, low-cost manufacture of the article.
Although the difficulties in manufacturing these bandages are substantial, the most significant disadvantages are those to the ultimate user of the bandage. Because the gauze pads lint, they deposit dust and/or fiber into the open wound. The gauze pad itself has so little thickness, compounded by a total lack of resilience, that the pad provides to the wound site little if any protection from contusion or other pressure trauma. This same gauze pad is likewise deficient in that it can absorb and hold only small amounts of medicaments or fluids such as wound exudates. In addition, despite improvements in pressure sensitive adhesives in recent years, conventional disposable bandages continue to cause pain and tissue trauma upon removal, particularly in sensitive areas such as the interdigital skin of the hands. Finally, the overwhelming majority of these disposable bandages are used on the fingers. When the adhesive tabs of these bandages are wrapped and overlapped about a finger, the tabs lose most or all of their moisture vapor permeability because the perforations in the overlapping tabs seldom if ever align to permit moisture vapor transmission. As a result, the skin covered by overlapping adhesive tabs macerates beneath a plastic vapor barrier.
Even the most recent developments in the disposable bandage art have failed to rectify the most significant of these problems. For example, the "Unitary Adhesive Bandage," disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,530,353, is manufactured from a sheet of heat fusible fibrous material, such as a nonwoven batt, which is folded at the center into a 3-layer pad and calendered at the sides to form tabs. The pad is then provided with a wound release surface, the tabs are coated with a hot melt adhesive and the bandage as a whole is fitted with release strips.
Unfortunately, the resulting product--like its predecessor disposable bandages--introduces fibrous batt type fibers and lint into the area of the wound, provides calendered adhesive coated thermoplastic tabs having no apparent absorbency or moisture vapor permeability, and covers the area of the wound with a comparatively non-resilient fibrous batt material. Furthermore, only the tab portions of the bandage may be coated with the hot melt adhesive, necessitating careful application of the adhesive to specified portions of the bandage during manufacture. In addition, the manufacture of the bandage requires both the preparation of a triple fold in the batt material and the precise calendering of the bandage--before application of the adhesive--to heat seal both the tab portions of the bandage and a tiny section of each side of the folded pad. Without this precise calendering, the structural integrity of the bandage might be well be lost during manufacture, marketing or use.
In view of all of the patented or otherwise known bandage products and designs, therefore, a need remains for an improved disposable bandage which may be manufactured from a single flat sheet, without folding, may be fabricated without gauze, batts, or other fibrous linting materials, and may be coated with a single adhesive layer over its entire surface, for ease of manufacture. Such a product would additionally demonstrate improved absorbency over known fibrous materials, as well as superior protective resilience in the area of the wound and ready permeability to moisture and moisture vapor in both the pad area and the adhesive tabs of the bandage.